Water, water everywhere.

Rain this weekend.
Lots of it, straight down, days and nights.
Pound-y rain. Thunder.
Weather radio bleeping and blooping, us joking about how the little man inside it kept telling us what we already knew: it was raining. We GET IT, little guy. Clock out.

We cleaned out closets, I dragged Bird along on a thrift store outing, A. did some wet grocery shopping, we all spent Saturday evening on a friend's porch to celebrate a birthday in the deluge. When it came to shoes, I chose poorly-- cheap purple flats that felt like wet socks on bare feet. Clammy ick. Reached for the pull-chain in the bedroom closet upstairs and drip, drip, drip down my arm from around the light fixture. Rats. Fix it later, oh well. Slept with the windows open and listened to more more more more rain. Woke up in gray light next to a fat, bare baby nursing in her sleep, rain pounding the roof, house completely silent, breezy. Lucky me.

Watery garden in the morning, got in the car and set out to church solo through the downpour, turned around to fetch a forgotten coffee mug from home and stayed. More closet cleaning, making up songs with Bird, scheming with A., making pizza dough, pinching the baby.

Meanwhile, 18 blocks away, the river was escaping its banks, and downtown was drowning. The Opry was drowning. The symphony center was drowning. Opryland Hotel. Lower Broadway. Entire neighborhoods. Schools. Businesses. The mall. History. People were evacuated. People bailed water and watched their keepsakes and furniture float out into the street. Uncontrollable water washed around street corners and flowed in through windows and doors. Cars were carried off. The stranded were rescued from their homes by boat. People lost power, phone service, each other. Roads and bridges crumbled while we ate our pizza and Bird declared her distaste for the crust, again.

The last two mornings I have driven across the bridge over the obscenely swollen river, over three-day-old lakes littered with parked cars, past the now-waterfront intersection of 8th Ave, through clouds of diesel fumes from the generators. I've passed over the waves on First Ave, driven my 4 miles over high ground, parked my car in the bone-dry lot behind my office, and spent large chunks of time obsessing about commas and capitalization rules as I proof a complex and frustrating piece that is set to print tomorrow.

Completely spared. Lucky, lucky me.

Hey, guess what I can do?

ANYTHING I WANT.

Welcome, dimentia

At my office, every person has a small bulletin board next to their office door to post clippings, projects, quotes, whatever.

There is a moon-shaped, wire-and-bead creation hanging on mine. It is about 8 inches tall and hangs from a shiny pink and purple ribbon.

I noticed it last week.

I have a vague sense that it was a gift, but I have no memory of it past that.

I have no idea how it got there, how long it's been there, where it came from, or even if I put it there or it was put there for me.

****

And would you like some losing-my-mind related TMI?

Every time I use the restroom at work, I return to my desk and cannot for the life of me remember whether or not I flushed. So I return to the bathroom to check. Every time.


That's it. Carry on.

Scenes from a Marriage:

Me: Know what would go great with this salad?

A: A bottle of booze and a day off?

Mistakes I Have Made, March 2010 Edition

1. Emailed the circulation dept. of a magazine I love to tell them, in response to their subscription renewal reminder, that hey! I ordered this subscription in September and I haven't received any issues! And they sendt the 3 back issues I've missed and will be sending everything first class from now on, yadda yadda terrific customer service yadda. Fixed. And then. On my bedside table (ok, old tv tray, but whatever, it sits by my bed with a lamp on it), I happen to notice the Winter issue. Of the magazine. Which I now remember reading cover to cover. Oh, and on the shelf by the window is the Fall issue. So I've been getting it, reading it, and forgetting all about it.


2. Bought a semi-gnarly booster car seat from a woman on craigslist, primarily because I had already written out the check before I met up with her in the parking lot and for some reason felt the deal had already been set in motion. It will do, but in hind sight... eh.


3. Pumped breast milk like a dedicated mama-mammal at the office, washed and sterilized all of my pump parts, and promptly left my baggies of nutritionally perfect and hard-won milkiness in the car all night. On at least three separate occasions.

4. Came within a millimeter of dumping a scoop of baby formula into an open jar of olives.

March, is it?

So, here it is, the Monday of my 4th week back to work full time, with Gopher in daycare full time.

And you know what? It's going just fine.

Sure, I miss my days of working from home. Mostly the parts when I was baby-snuggling and coffee-getting, though, which meant that I spent a lot of nights working from home to meet my deadlines. And as fantastically snuggly as that Gopher can be, I don't miss working FT with an infant and no childcare.

The month of February was a great opportunity to live the dream, refine the dream. What was once "I want to work from home" is now the more specific "I want to work for myself." Which is good to know. And what was once "sooner than later" is now "when the time is right," which is not now. And what was once "I could totally handle it" is now "I would really, really have to work at time management and give up on perfection."

And for whatever reason (maybe the refined and less urgent dream), I am much more comfortable where I am and I'm realizing that I really like what I do, that I get to do some really interesting things with interesting people, that I am treated with much kindness, and that I am really, really lucky when it comes to my job and many, many other areas in my life. I mean, I knew that before Gopher, but coming back to work was a nice reminder that everything is FINE. GOOD, even. That there is no need to reinvent everything, all the time.

The mornings, though. If I could just fix ONE thing, please. The fucking mornings. The racing around, the unpreparedness, the madness. The limited baby-snuggling, lack of patience-having. The feeling like I've been clawing my way out of a deep, dark pit for hours upon hours before I even hit the office door. That I could do without.

***

Spring must be hiding and giggling and almost peeing its pants somewhere, waiting to jump out and be all "Bloodeedoo!" because I have been feeling CRAFTY and RESTLESS. I've been knitting washcloths like your Granny, I made Birdy 4 little belts to hold her jeans up (bless her heart), and I've been threatening for three weeks to leave this damned house with no children strapped or otherwise attached to my body to go to the fabric store and purchase one of about 8 dress patterns I've had my eye on. That's right, I said it. DRESS PATTERN.

Which is funny, right? Miss jeans and solid-colored t-shirt over here? Well, despite my legendary * ahem * simple fashion sense, I spend a weird amount of time thinking about clothing, partially from a nerdy construction angle and partially from an "I'd like to be in over my head on a project" angle. Plus, dresses. I mean, how much easier does it get? One piece of clothing + shoes. Tights if it's cold. No finding multiple clean pieces. And in my current body shape, no waistband, amen. What may seem like a move toward the fancy is actually a move toward the lazy, and I am totally cool with that.

***

Bird and I ran into one of her former daycare teachers at the hotdog stand a few weekends ago. She's a lovely person, mid-twenties, who has recently become a police officer. She spends her working hours patrolling on foot in the projects. Which is, as you might have guessed, is totally hard core.

I realized as we were talking that becoming a cop is one of the most unsettling things I could imagine. In my life now, with my constantly humming little brain thinking up bizarre scenarios in the background of my actual, valuable thoughts, there are plenty of situations (plausible and implausible) that I am able to dismiss with "I would call the police."

But for Laura, holy shit, she IS the police. Which, for some, might feel empowering. To me, it seems terrifying. To know that this idea of an all-seeing protector is truly just a human, with no superhuman powers and no more magic than anybody else. That since Joe Policeman visited my 4th grade class, I've had this imaginary army of officers who totally had my back and really? There's just ME. I'm IT, and I know just exactly how un-magical I am. And there are a bunch of people out there who think I'm capable of being not only a badass, but a superhero badass.

And really (this is my point), it's kind of the same thing being a parent, isn't it? Those moments when you say to yourself, "Holy shit, I AM the mom. And I don't have a clue what I'm doing."

What I just said to my friend on the phone:

"I'll give you that crochet hook at church tomorrow."

Old. Lady.